On Three Kinds Of Application Of "Abstraction" By Marx

In his early theoretical writings,Marx mostly used the category of "abstraction" at the level of negation and criticism,because the early Marx was mainly exposed to the abstraction of Hegelian speculation,hence he rejected "abstraction".Around the 1860 s,Marx threw himself back into his own study of political economy,and at this time Hegel’s "from abstract to concrete" approach provided considerable help to his study of political economy,and Marx was deeply inspired by this,and his attitude toward "abstraction" changed from the original philosophical rejection of abstraction to the use of abstraction in political economy.Marx re-affirmed the importance of abstraction from the point of view of political economy and formed theoretical self-consciousness about abstraction,which is embodied in his three kinds of application of "abstraction" in the study of political economy.The first application is the abstraction embodied in the analysis of economic forms as an analytical tool,which mainly includes the extraction of the "commonality abstraction" of the general and common as the content,the "essential abstraction" of the special and difference as the content,and the process of "from the commonality abstraction to the essential abstraction".The second application is the abstraction in the method of political economy,which as the starting point of " rising from abstract to the concrete ",is a link in the process of thinking,embodied as an abstract concept or category.The first two applications are embodied in the process of thinking,while the third is embodied in real life,referring to realistic activities with abstract characteristics,embodied in the revelation of the "individual is ruled by abstraction" in capitalist society,that is,the abstraction of reality becomes the revelation of domination.Grasping Marx’s three kinds of application of "abstraction" in the study of political economy is helpful to understand Marx’s revelation of the capitalist mode of production,and then to understand Marx’s political economy theory and its categories.